


River of Souls

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Fugue Feast Gift, Low Chaos (Dishonored)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecelia chases a nebulous dream, and Billie is fleeing her sins. Dawn is rising on the horizon; all that's left is the space between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	River of Souls

**Author's Note:**

> For Fugue Feast, as requested: Billie Lurk/Cecelia, post-game low chaos. [Payroo](http://payroo.tumblr.com/) , I hope this is something close to what you wanted!

It's a cool morning when Cecelia steps out into the Hound Pits' back yard for the last time. The chill wind cuffs and caresses, yanking strands of hair from the careful bun beneath her hat. She doesn't bother to fix them; the mess reflects her mood.

 

Off to her left lie two raised mounds of earth among the old crates and rubble, visible from the doorway if she were inclined to look. She isn't; her mourning is done. Today is for leaving things behind. For a moment she thinks of her sister, a lady's maid in a merchant household, better off by far than Cecelia herself. There's a note left on the bar for her; Samuel won't get rid of it, once he sees, and it's the best she could do for farewells.

 

They were never all that close anyway.

 

Splashes over by the water, a little girl's excited squeal. Their Empress stands at the prow of Samuel's boat, throwing rocks at the hagfish and laughing as they dart around in panic. She's all in white still; Cecelia wonders if she has any other clothes. A girl like that, surely she has a wardrobe full of nice things. Why stick to white when you could have the rainbow?

 

Samuel and Corvo are perched side by side on a nearby rock, watching her play. Or rather, Samuel is watching; Cecelia can hear him patiently correcting Emily's throwing technique, gentle words that make the little girl bounce with glee. Next to him, Corvo stares out across the water, as if he can't bring himself to look at Emily herself. He rubs at the odd tattoo on the back of his hand; maybe he isn't even aware of doing it.

 

She's glad they haven't left for the Tower yet. Callista has gone to stay with her uncle, and nobody is really sure if Lord Burrows or Admiral- Lord Regent Havelock have supporters left over who might try to hurt Lady Emily. It's best to wait, Samuel explained to her when she asked. No need to go rushing into things before people are really ready.

 

Cecelia sees the tentative arm he has placed around Corvo's slumped shoulders, and thinks to herself that it's not just Emily he was referring to. But that's no business of hers, and it's time she was going anyway. She leaves the men-folk sitting by the filthy Wrenhaven water, their heads bowed in quiet conversation. Maybe it's mourning, maybe commiseration; she doesn't care too much anymore, so long as they don't lose little Emily to a hagfish.

 

"I wouldn't let her play in Samuel's boat like that," she thinks of saying before she leaves. "I wouldn't let her lean on the edge to look for treasure, she'll fall in. We gave so much for this child, don't you let her die now."

 

But of course, a comment now would be intrusive, with Corvo's shoulders slumped so, and Samuel focussed on bringing him back from his own personal Void. Intrusion means slaps or shouting, though neither ever struck her as _that_ sort (and they say Corvo didn't kill a single soul while out on his adventures; she heard the Admiral comment on it, his voice an unsteady mix of awe and displeasure like the roughest of seas at their least predictable, so it seems to her that it must be true) but it's best to be cautious. There is no place for men in her life, however much she's tried to tell herself otherwise. Wasn't _that_ a waste of time.

 

Cecelia leaves unnoticed without a word, meagre belongings tied to her back in an old tablecloth; she thought of staying, running the Hound Pits herself like she dreamed that one time, but all her dreams have always floated just out of reach like dandelions on the wind. If she ever caught one she'd release it immediately in fright, and nothing would change except that she'd look silly.

 

The Hound Pits wouldn't be right without Lydia, anyway.

 

Dunwall's docks aren't hard to find, though Cecelia has never been there herself. She took the precaution of asking Samuel about them a while back, around the time Martin returned and started spending all his time whispering in corners with the Admiral and Pendleton. Being prepared has never hurt, and her apartment across the street from the Pubs was only ever Plan A. This was meant as a last resort, dreamed up in the murky depths between waking and sleep when all the world seemed right at the tips of her fingers, should she wish to hold it.

 

Samuel's offhand directions held in her mind as firmly as the grip she maintains on her tablecloth-wrapped belongings, Cecelia makes her way down Dunwall's filthy streets. Stays nears people, when she can find them, avoids the eyes of Watchmen and walks on the main roads with what confidence she can muster. This is the way to invisibility outside the Hound Pits. Walk like you've a right to be there, and people will believe it.

 

She still isn't sure how nobody remembered her during the killings. Callista was spared out of respect for her uncle, but Cecelia has nobody. She's risky. Did they really not see her, even once?

 

The docks themselves are packed, loud and impatient like the gangs of stray cats she used to feed scraps to on her breaks. Workers everywhere, but Cecelia's eyes are drawn to the ships themselves, and the water beyond. _That's_ where she's going, and everything else is just details.

 

Nobody warned her they'd be so large. Masts stretching for the skies like so many trees in a winter-bare forest; further out she can see several already leaving, sails unfurling implausibly. Who _folds_ them? Don't they get damaged, with the wind and bitter storms she once heard the Admiral mention? How are they kept so very white? Lydia herself couldn't find flaw with _those_.

 

Cecelia stands staring, tucked just off the main workers' thoroughfare where she won't be bothering anyone. How strange it all seems; she realises with a start that the words being bandied and barked around her aren't all things she understands. Of course not; how stupid of her. There are people here from all over the Isles, each as exotic as Lady Emily's lace-trimmed white clothes. Worlds Cecelia has never seen outside of books, worlds she never _once_ dreamed of, and suddenly she finds herself frightened, shaking. This was a bad idea.

 

Just as suddenly, she's no longer alone.

 

"Busy day. I wonder if this is normal, or if they're all scrambling to work out who'll be running their lives from now on. A child doesn't inspire much confidence in the poor."

 

Cecelia turns slowly, gripping her bag with both hands and wondering if she can use it as a weapon. It sure felt heavy enough on the long walk from the Hound Pits, but maybe the stranger has friends; bad enough that she's armed, a pistol at one thigh and a sword at the other. _Her coat is red_ , Cecelia thinks in a moment of madness. _That's sensible, when she stabs me it won't show the blood as much. Blood's not easy to remove, and she doesn't look all that inclined to laundry_.

 

She lifts her gaze to the woman's dusky face, the dark hair ruffled lightly by wind. A strong face; Cecelia finds no trace of fear in the flickering eyes that jump restlessly across the crowd, as though hunting.

 

Or hiding, maybe. At her feet lies a leather pack, strapped up tight and bulging with at least as many things as Cecelia brought with her. Whoever she is, she hasn't packed like someone who means to return.

 

"I don't know," Cecelia admits, trying to curb her natural instinct to flee. She plants her feet like Lydia used to when delivering a scolding and makes sure to meet the strangers eyes, as much as she'll allow. "I've never been here before." They're the same height when Cecelia stops cringing and stands her tallest.

 

"Looking to book passage?"

 

"How did you- _oh_." The woman's eyes dart to the tablecloth-bag, and Cecelia feels her cheeks begin to flush. "Yes, I'm looking for- for a way out. I'm Cecelia," she adds defiantly, simply because her instincts tell her not to.

 

"Cecelia? Nice name." The stranger's eyes have moved to the boats; she gives them the same attention as the workers, tracing their shapes speculatively, as if she were thinking of buying one. She doesn't offer a name in return; Cecelia doesn't dare ask.

 

"Where are you going?" the woman asks after a while.

 

"I'm not sure," Cecelia says. "I haven't really thought about it."

 

She raises her eyebrows. "That's poor planning."

 

Cecelia wilts under the fierce gaze, and can't help but imagine she is being judged. As she deserves; a girl like her has no right to go and try changing her position. The Overseers all say so, and they ought to know.

 

Knowing she's wrong isn't going to stop her though; if she doesn't try now she never will. She'll end up like Callista, all her dreams kept neatly in a locked chest in the dustiest corner of her heart. Sometimes she'll let herself peer guiltily in through the keyhole, but never for long enough to disturb the dust accruing on top. And there's no getting rid of a chest that heavy on her own, so it stays in the corner, shut up tight, and in the end all it makes her is miserable.

 

"Sorry. Guess I'm going wherever will take me." The wind rears its head and out at the harbour mouth the sails billow, white like clouds and gulls' wings. Cecelia has never seen so much potential laid out in front of her before. "Where are _you_ going?"

 

The woman looks away, fixes her gaze on the sails, and if she feels as overwhelmed as Cecelia it only shows in a fractional tightening at the corner of her eyes. "I'm not sure."

 

"That's poor planning," Cecelia observes, and the woman's lips twitch.

 

"I'm trying my hand at being spontaneous." She eyes the row of ships, bobbing on the shifting, surging tide, before pointing out four that look no different to the rest. "Those are the smugglers, they'll take passengers for coin. Pick one. Wherever it's headed, so are we."

 

"Me?"

 

"See anyone else around looking to leave?"

 

Cecelia swallows and turns to the ships the woman singled out, trying to work out what makes them different. What makes them _special_. She's never been one for ships, not like Callista, maybe because she never thought she'd leave Dunwall.

_They all have flags_ , she thinks, though it must be a stupid observation: most of the ships here have flags. If she had put her mind to listening in on more of Lady Emily's lessons, maybe she'd know what they mean, but she didn't. The stranger waiting patiently at her side must surely have guessed that Cecelia wouldn't know about flags. Didn't she say she wanted to be spontaneous?

 

"That one," Cecelia decides, singling out her favourite. White and gold, it strikes her as much more cheerful than the greens and blues and purples on all the rest. White and gold, like the sun reflecting off the Wrenhaven River at noon. The colours mean good things to her, a brief ten minutes snatched to eat by the water, to feed the gulls and fishes and watch the clouds for incoming rain. These are the colours of her dreams.

 

"Serkonos?" the woman says with a start. "Interesting. But I did say the choice would be yours, and I'll keep my word. Shall we find its captain?"

 

Graceful she steps into the milling crowd, one hand reaching back to grasp Cecelia's wrist and tug her along. It's an iron hold, strong as shackles, and Cecelia doesn't fight. It's nice in a way. They have somewhere to go now, and she's found someone to attract attention for her.

 

They find the captain by the side of his ship, a weathered man with salt-and-pepper hair, creased skin and none of Samuel's kindness in his features. He looks them up and down like goods at market, eyes lingering in way that leave Cecelia scarlet and shrinking in her boots, though he listens readily enough when Cecelia's companion tells him what they want.

 

"It'll cost you, ladies." He spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness; Cecelia thinks to herself that it's as false as Martin's promises that everything would be alright. "Gettin' past quarantine ain't a walk through th'Estate District; they catch us, it's Coldridge, or death maybe. More cargo means bigger risk."

 

He names his price and Cecelia's heart sinks down into her stomach. She doesn't have that much. Even if she hands over every coin she'd planned to hoard for food at the other end of the journey, she still doesn't have more than _half_ , though she also took all of Lydia's emergency funds. She'd figured the other woman wouldn't need a stash of coin anymore, not with being buried in the Hound Pits' yard next to Wallace. Maybe she might even send some good luck Cecelia's way, for old time's sake. It's only now Cecelia remembers that their old times weren't all _that_ friendly, and Lydia used up her good will in not pointing out Cecelia to the Admiral before he killed her.

 

At her side, the strange woman snorts, like she knows she's being cheated and doesn't care

"We'll take it," she says, and Cecelia gawps at her.

  
"But I-" she begins, but nobody seems to hear. That's normal, at least.

 

"We're _going_ ," the woman says firmly. "I don't want to spend another second in this Outsider-damned city, so we'll be boarding now, and you'll make sure none of your men harass us. I get angry when I'm being harassed." Without another word she ushers a quaking Cecelia up the gangplank and into the captain's cabin, and hands over enough coin to cover _both_ their fares.

 

It doesn't stop there. For the sake of space they'll be sharing a cabin, and bunk beds that don't pose as many problems as they might. Cecelia immediately goes to place her things on the bottom bunk, and in that same moment the woman reaches for the top one. They don't even bump into each other, though the cabin is barely a few paces in width, and maybe one more in length.

 

She has an eerie grace, this dark woman with her darting eyes like dragonflies; she's like the cats Cecelia has seen roaming wild around Dunwall. A bigger cat with sharper claws and, as it turns out, a cat's dislike for water.

 

"I wonder how far down this goes?"

 

Cecelia wants to say that it's not a contest, and nobody is watching this woman force herself to lean over the rail, hands gripping tight to keep her steady. Though what there is to fear, Cecelia can't tell. They've been at sea two days and the weather is calm, their boat tilt-tipping this way and that in a constant, subconscious movement she's coming to love. Dunwall has long since passed from sight, but the gulls kept close for a while, swooping and soaring, and Cecelia made herself dizzy turning around and around to watch them.

 

Now she watches the border between sea and sky, plays picture-hunting games with clouds and looks for the faces of the dead in shifting grey waters. No luck on that front, but she hasn't been looking long. Everyone passes through on their way to somewhere better, or so she's heard. Maybe there's a delay; it would make sense that the poor are made to wait a little longer than their betters, even after death. Still, the captain said they'd be at sea a few weeks yet, so there's time. Cecelia would like to bid Lydia one last farewell.

 

She has to wonder how long it'll be before her companion stops throwing up after each meal. It's hardly a burden to hold her hair as she retches over the rail, rubbing her back until she snarls and shows her teeth, but it'd be nice if they could both enjoy the trip. Instead, the woman forces herself on to the deck, climbs any ropes she finds unused and makes herself lean out to look at what scares her the most.

 

"Have you ever thought you might be crazy?" Cecelia asks, eyeing the woman's death-grip on the railing, and the sweat forming on her forehead. "This is silly, you don't have to look if it scares you."

 

"You're wrong." Two days of throwing up, and nights of tossing and talking in her sleep, have left the woman's mellow voice sandpaper rough. "I have to face my fears so they have no chance of defeating me. Beat my own weakness, before it can cripple me. That's how it works." She sounds utterly miserable.

 

Cecelia hesitates a moment, then reaches to lay a hand on top of the other woman's. "Not anymore," she says firmly. "Now come away from there, you're scaring me."

 

"What if we sink?" the woman says insistently. "What if I'm too afraid to swim for the rowboats, and the sea swallows me up to rot, or be finished off by hagfish?"

 

Cecelia tugs on her hand, slowly drawing her away from the railing, and the blue-black waters beyond. "Then I'll come and get you. I'll _drag_ you to a rowboat if I have to; in your red coat, you won't be hard to find. Stop worrying."

 

The woman's hands twitch into fists for a second before relaxing. She allows Cecelia to pull her away, back to the deck's relative safety, and the curious not-glances of the sailors. They've yet to bother Cecelia in any way, but she sees the way they avoid her companion's gaze and wonders if the problem was taken care of behind her back. Best not to ask, really. Questions attract attention.

 

"I'm Billie," the woman says abruptly, and Cecelia turns to stare at her in surprise. She'd all but resigned herself to never knowing. "Billie Lurk. If the ship is sinking and we find ourselves separated, that's the name to shout."

 

"I'll remember that. Billie." The ghost of a smile flits across Billie's cat eyes, like something she only half remembers how to do.

 

"See that you do. I'm holding you to your promise of rescue, Cecelia. Don't you let the sea have me; slit my throat first, if you have to."

 

" _Now_ you're being silly." But the worst of it is, she's serious, or at least thinks she is. Cecelia doesn't know what to do with this kind of fatalism. She's never been any good at helping people out of their dark places; for a moment she thinks of Corvo and Samuel, sitting together in a self-made world where the dark couldn't come, beating down the memories with talking.

 

It's worth a try.

 

"Let's have some tea," Cecelia says firmly, pushing an unresisting Billie towards the steps that'll lead them to their cabin. "I have a few biscuits left, and we can think about Serkonos, and the things we'll do when we get there."

 

"If we get there," Billie says. Cecelia chooses to ignore it.

 

"You go and get comfortable, I'll bring the tea. Go on."

 

_We_ , she thinks, watching the kettle boil in the ship's poor excuse for a kitchen. _The things we'll do, the places we'll go. The people we'll be_. _We_ means more than one, means not being alone; she's never worked that way before. Harder to stay alive and unseen when there's more than one to take care of, and Cecelia can only barely take care of herself anyway. She's stuck on a ship in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by men who have doubtlessly noticed her, and her only protection is a woman who fears the sea, and screams softly in her sleep.

 

_But we'll be fine_ , Cecelia tells herself. The words don't sound wrong in her head, however much she prods at them. It might be easier to have someone there when they land. She's survived alone in the past, but maybe Serkonos is different. Cecelia realises with a start that she doesn't even know what language will be spoken in her new home. Stupid, not to have thought of it until now. She wonders if her companion- if Billie has any idea.

 

She left the tea too long, and it'll taste funny now; Lydia wouldn't have stood for that. But Lydia isn't here to complain, just as Wallace won't be pointing out the stains she couldn't quite clean off their mugs.

 

"Sorry," Cecelia says back in their cabin, handing Billie the mug that isn't too badly chipped. "I got distracted."

 

"Someone bother you?" Billie's eyes are dark, speculative, searching Cecelia's face for any signs of fear. The razor-sharp sword she always carries sits by her side on Cecelia's bed, ready for grabbing.

 

Pulling out the rickety wooden stool they've been using for a chair, Cecelia tugs her sad sack of belongings out from under the bed and rummages inside as she answers.

"No, it's fine. I was just thinking about the future. How different it'll be."

 

"I'm going to need a new name, I guess," Billie says, eyes fixed unfocused on the opposite wall. She grips her mug in one gloved hand, untouched. "Lurk doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a woman's good character."

 

Cecelia digs out the last of the biscuits she took from the Hound Pits' kitchen, handing one to Billie and dunking the other in her over-stewed tea.

"Can you even _do_ normal things? Cooking, cleaning, planting and growing?"

 

"Is that what you want? To do what you've always done?"

 

"I just want to survive." The biscuit is stale enough that even her tea only makes it half edible. Still, if she closes her eyes it tastes like a kiss from home.

 

Billie watches her unblinkingly, the biscuit held tight in her hand as if she can't work out what to do with it.

"Well I want out," she says abruptly. "The killing business changed me, and I don't like what I saw in the mirror, near the end. I failed someone. He failed me first, but that doesn't excuse me doing what I did. This time things have to go differently, or there's no point in having survived it." She takes an absent bite of biscuit and pulls a face at the taste. "How are you _eating_ this?"

 

"It's better with tea," Cecelia says, and doesn't try to explain that they have to finish these, because Wallace made them and he won't ever be making any more. She didn't manage to find his recipe; maybe there'll be even better ones in Serkonos. The first batch Cecelia makes, she'll dedicate to Wallace; he never did teach her how to make a proper curtsey.

 

Billie must read something into the things Cecelia doesn't say, because she dunks her biscuit obediently, and doesn't point out that it hasn't really improved things. It's bad to be envious of other people, but Cecelia thinks she may envy this woman's control, her dedication to not giving offense. It must be envy, this lurch in her stomach. She's not sure what other name to give it.

 

"Please don't stop being Billie," she says, and receives a questioning _Hm?_ through a mouthful of biscuit. "Maybe some things need changing, but don't throw out the good as well. There's so little good around these days."

 

"Just the 'Lurk' then," Billie agrees after swallowing her mouthful. "Maybe I'll find something cheerful for my other name. Something with flowers, or birds, or sweet baby animals. I'm sure it'll suit me just fine."

 

Cecelia looks at her across the bare meter of old wooden floor and air that smells like tea and bottomless ocean, sees a woman who goes nowhere without her sword, sleeps in her stained leather gloves, and offered her a chance at escape without asking any questions, because she _understands_ \- and tries to imagine her as sweet.

"Billie _Lark_ ," she says after a moment, and the other woman's eyes widen slightly. "Billie Mayflower, Billie Meadow...Billie Blossom."

 

She stops herself, wondering if it's just a bit too far. Talking too much, too freely, is grounds for a slap at least- but she's not at the Hound Pits anymore. She sees no violence in Billie's expression; instead, a tentative smile, like dawn rising over the Wrenhaven.

"Billie Songbird," Billie says, and her smile widens, bright and blazing. "Something gentler, maybe? Billie Dandelion. Billie Gosling."

 

"Billie Oddly-Shaped-Cloud," Cecelia suggests. Dawn breaks, golden, achingly full of potential; they laugh together without reservation, and for the space of it Cecelia thinks-

_oh. It's not envy after all._

 

"This is going to be a disaster, Cecelia," Billie says eventually; in her head, Cecelia agrees. But saying so would be counterproductive, when they've just become so friendly and all, so she swallows down her worries with the last of her tea and lays the mug aside with what she hopes is a confident air. Knowing her, it probably isn't.

 

"Don't be so grim," she says. "Just think, after all the things we've left behind, anything new will probably be an improvement. People can't be unhappy forever."

 

"Some things aren't easily forgotten. I caused a lot of deaths by my actions; they weren't exactly friends of mine, but I don't think that makes me any less guilty." Billie's eyes are distant again, lost someplace far away where Cecelia doesn't belong. And it must be distant indeed; she takes a sip of her tea without noticing that it's gone cold. "I'm not sure that's an unhappiness I can describe to you properly."

 

"Let me tell you about Lydia," Cecelia says abruptly. It's an offer, not insistence, but she feels safe enough to continue. "And Wallace, though he wasn't really my friend. Though it might take a while."

 

"I'm listening," Billie tells her.

 

Cecelia talks for a while, and cries for a while more, though she told herself she wouldn't. She gets to the end with Billie holding one of her hands, and when she does it feels a little less painful than it did this morning. Tears are easy to mop up, but the lingering pressure of a hand in hers remains long after they move on to happier topics.

 

A week and a half later, in the dark cabin that rocks and creaks and still isn't louder than Wallace's snores, Billie speaks.

"Are you awake?"

 

"Mhm." Cecelia rolls onto her side and stretches an arm out from her bunk, waving it where Billie will see, if she's looking. "Can't sleep either?"

 

"I don't want to dream." Rustling in the top bunk as Billie shifts in place; Cecelia imagines her folding her hands behind her head, leaning back on the gloves she never removes. "Can I tell you a story?"

 

"Okay," Cecelia says, and thinks that all the leviathans in the sea could not have dragged a different answer from her. She wants to know Billie, more than she can remember wanting anything else, except maybe the new life she's mere days from. And there's no reason she can't have both.

 

In the dark, she can almost hear Billie's breathing.

 

"It's about the Whalers, and Daud. How I met them, how they kept me, and how I turned on them when I was needed. Not a very happy story."

 

"I'm listening," Cecelia says, and Billie tells her everything.

 

Days later, with the sun at her back and the first gulls looping wildly in the sky above her head, Cecelia braces herself on the railing and stares into the sea for faces. Still nothing, though she's looked every day, but it's not really all that surprising. The sea is a big place, if the Admiral's maps were accurate, and the crossing to Serkonos may not be where she should be looking. Or maybe the dead are shy; she's tried searching at night, just in case, but it's too dark to see. Soon it'll be too late.

 

"What are you looking for?" Warmth at her side, a hand brushing her hip as it comes to rest on the railing. "I've seen the way you lean, always looking at the water. I thought at first you might be afraid, but you're not, are you? Is it whales you want to see? I don't think they swim here; too many merchant ships take this route."

 

"It's not whales." She smiles at Billie, at the white-knuckled grip on the railing beside her. Cecelia keeps telling her there's no need to come so close, that she may be stupid about some things, but she'd have to be much stupider to let herself fall in- but it doesn't work. Billie's eyes dart between the water and Cecelia's face; she's probably thinking about how quick she'd have to be, to grab Cecelia if she slipped.

 

It's nice to be worried about.

 

"I was hoping I'd get to see Lydia again," she explains, turning her eyes back to the water. It's not that she doesn't want to look at Billie; she does, for days and days and maybe even _years_ , but this is important too. "But so far I haven't seen anybody at all."

 

"In the water? Why would she be there? You said she was shot, not drowned." A moment of silence between them, and then Billie offers a halting, "Sorry, that was-"

 

"It's fine." Cecelia considers explaining that years at work in pubs have left her immune to taking offense, that she's heard far worse and _laughed_ at it, but she doesn't bother. Billie is trying her best to change, and whatever form that change takes isn't for Cecelia to intrude on. "Just something I heard people talking about a few times. When people die, they go...somewhere else, that wasn't really clear. But to get there your soul has to swim, like the whales. Only I'm not sure what direction they go, so maybe this isn't the right way."

 

"Souls in the water?" To her credit, Billie doesn't laugh. "I guess it makes a sort of sense, though not one the Abbey would approve of, to my mind."

 

"The Abbey can't know everything. If they did, there wouldn't be heretics."

 

"True enough."

 

They wait awhile, rocked cradle-like, side to side by the waves and wind while above the gulls whirl like loose leaves. In the end, Cecelia sighs.

 

"I guess she's not coming." She turns her back on disappointment and tries to leave, but a gloved iron grip fastens around her wrist and holds her in place.

 

"Wait, Cecelia," Billie says quietly, tugging on her arm like she did weeks ago at Dunwall's docks. Cecelia followed her that day and it's only led her to good things, so once again she lets herself be led.

 

"She's not coming, there's no point." But she stops at the railing obediently, and when Billie nudges her, pointing towards the horizon, she looks. There's something there; a cloud, maybe, or- "Is that _Serkonos_?"

 

"It really is." Billie sounds as awed as Cecelia herself. "We made it; we're going to be fine."

 

"Things aren't ever _that_ simple," Cecelia laughs.

 

Still, looking out across the shifting seas, gull-calls and the wind snapping their gold-and-white flag, Cecelia gives herself over to hope. Sure it won't be easy, but that doesn't mean it'll be bad. She's often found the best parts of her life have been things she's had to fight for.

 

She feels an arm being placed around her waist, and leans back into that red, red coat. Let the sailors see and mutter about unnatural things, and heresy. They won't ever see her again soon enough, and Billie will make things difficult for anyone who tries to bother them; she hasn't changed her name yet. Just in case.

 

"I wouldn't worry about not having seen Lydia," Billie tells her, as close to gentle as she's ever come. "Maybe that's the point, you _can't_ see them. They've deserved their rest. But I bet she saw you looking for her."

 

Cecelia thinks about this; it sounds right to her, in a way. One you're dead, you should be allowed a rest from being looked at. Still, it's a nice thought, Lydia knowing she was there. She can take that little joy with her to the next place, when she's done passing through this river of souls.

 

"Don't _you_ leave me, Billie," Cecelia says, feels the hand on her waist tighten slightly and smiles to herself. "I'd have to spend a very long time looking for you."

 

"Not so long. I think you'll find me right behind you; someone's got to watch your back." Billie rests her chin on Cecelia's shoulder, a solid weight that's somehow more comforting than the weight of her best wooden broom ever was. A sign of things to come, maybe.

 

They watch the shore approaching, and the waters watch them go.


End file.
